Dublin pays homage to long-lost son Francis Bacon

Dublin has reclaimed one of its long-lost sons. GILBERT WONG reports.

The British painter Francis Bacon was only 5 when his family left his birthplace, Dublin, for London. This has not deterred the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin from creating a special homage to the city's long-lost son.

The gallery has transplanted Bacon's studio to Dublin, right down to the paint splatters, the piles of detritus, the ambience of chaotic despair and even the dust on the floor.

Bacon's story runs to cliche. For the first decade or more of his painting life, his work was largely rejected by the arts establishment. In 1944 he was so dismayed that he destroyed much of his early work. Only a few years later his painting Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion created an uproar - and his name.

He went on to become perhaps the most feted contemporary painter in Britain and arguably one of the most despondent.

"Man now realises that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason.

"I enjoy life but I have absolutely no belief in anything ... the very fact that you exist, that you see what's going on around you, that must create anguish in anybody," he once said.